Desinging a House (with a music room/studio) from scratch

[surfsup]

Okay, it's dream time. Let's say you were going to do a design from scratch build for a 3-4 br two story with a basement.

What would you do to incorporate a music room that can be used for that but also repurposed for resale? put it on the 2nd floor? 1st floor? basement (yuk)? Some ideas

- insulate the interior walls (sound)
- design closets like a bedroom that back to other closets so there are multiple walls/barriers between
- solid door, not hollow core
- toward the back of the house to reduce street noise?
- bedroom size to make it repurpose into a bedroom? family room type of room?
- insulate the floor between the joists
- radiant heat/AC so no furnace noise/moving air

Gimme your ideas please...

[vibratoking]

From experience, insulation in floors, ceilings, and walls will do next to nothing to stop sound from entering or exiting. You pretty much have to have a room within a room. You also need a full wrap of something HEAVY, like lead sheets. It takes a large mass to stop bass frequencies. Heavy concrete basement walls can be your friend when it comes to stopping sound.

Solid core door covered at least on one side with a lead sheet.

Lead sheets are expensive. That Durock cement backer board 1/2" thickness is a good substitute.

[surfsup]

this is not going to be a professional studio, just a in-house home music room for jamming and doing minor recordings to share with some buddies. In the last house I built, I insulated interior walls and believe me, sound was significantly reduced. I figure if I can play a 3 watt amp and not be too disturbing that is good.

If i want to record with an 18watt I do it on the weekend when the wife it out with the kid using reamped tracks to speed it up. So I'm not looking for perfection. Just some ideas that I may not think of since there's a whole world of people out there with calloused fingertips!

[NickC]

Forget the pink stuff. Fiberglass insulation for sound-treatment is useless. Waste of time and money.

However, the stuff you DO want for that application is rigid rock wool (a.k.a. mineral wool) insulation. I've used Roxul brand called Safe & Sound with excellent results.

It comes in different thickness and batt sizes. I go with 2" thick x 2 feet wide x 4 feet long to make gobo's and corner bass traps.

I built a simple web-page that describes how to make sound control panels and bass-traps, link:

http://nickcrosby.net/Studio/

It's even easier to cram it into wall, ceiling, floor cavities to significantly cut down on vibration/sound at relatively modest cost.

PS - wear a mask and eye protection when working with the mineral wool insulation. It's not nearly as bad as the pink stuff, but can still be an irritant.

HTH

[vibratoking]

... I insulated interior walls and believe me, sound was significantly reduced...

I guess this is where we disagree. Insulated walls can't stop a drummer, bass player, or my 5W amp. Especially if I use all 5W. It can't even stop my son's 20W subwoofer when it is running at anything above a whisper. Insulation will almost stop a fart from being heard in the bathroom.


Nick - I looked at your website. I agree rock wool is good for sound treatment, but not so much for blocking IME. Those can't be cinder block walls, can they?

[surfsup]

Nick, I'll check that out. Thanks. Also the insulation I'm thinking of is the blown in kind. Still ineffective? There will never be a drummer btw.

[John_P_WI]

Surf,

My cousin built a room following the "golden dimensions" theory and was a very nice sounding room. I do know that he spent major $$$ and following his design it would not be incorporated into a "standard" house, but would be a large addition. I do recall his son telling me that the wall studs were 2 x 10" for added sound dampening.

Sites like this have a lot of info if you dig:

http://www.realtraps.com/art_basics.htm

[NickC]

............ Those can't be cinder block walls, can they?

Sadly yes, my subterranean studio has two cinder block walls. Both have been treated with traps and sound absorption panels. It's far from perfect, but still better than some commercial studios I've worked in.

[NickC]

Nick, I'll check that out. Thanks. Also the insulation I'm thinking of is the blown in kind. Still ineffective? There will never be a drummer btw.

The blown-in stuff will not be effective for sound treatment purposes. It will keep the heat in if installed in exterior wall cavities.

The Roxul mineral fiber insulation is far, far superior as both an insulator (keeping the heat in during winter, and the air-conditioning in summer) and sound absorber than blown-in or the fiberglass stuff. It's tops for both purposes.

[ER]

For resale value, build it in a neighborhood where your neighbors aren't close enough to be bothered by the sound. Have a grand entryway with banisters and walkway to second floor where you can hang drum mikes, a marble or other stone type floor for the entry.

Golden ratios on everything. South facing window area at 7-12% per square foot of living space, insulate for warmth not sound.

If you need to kill sound a high mass room within a room is the way to go, the basement is best for a studio/family room, have built in large closets for storage of instruments where the doors swing out to form isolation sections. Everything can be put away and the room can be used as a family room/ home theater when not playing or recording, use a dropped ceiling and you can watch movies at night without bothering the other people in the house. People house shopping love storage and having a place for sewing/kids/man cave separate from the more "public" parts of the house. Make sure the stairs to the basement are wide enough to bring gear in and out or have a storm type entrance accessible from the side/back with vehicle access. Again golden ratios with sound treatment (bass traps to minimize room nodes and reflections) this will be value added and do double duty as part of a home theater.

Or build a separate large garage with shop and build a second room inside that you take down when you move. That way you can play and record whenever you want, and you won't have to move your hammond B3 up and down the stairs when you get famous and start playing out.

[surfsup]

All good points, the lot runs east to west and is somewhat narrow so i think there will be a decent amount of southern exposure. I'll check out this golden ratio. I would assume architacts and architectural software is familiar with this ratio?

[Bear]

ER is onto something on the resale front. Design the room so it works perfectly in line for people's expectation of what a home theater should look like. What are the standard amenities that go with? Wiring for an overhead projector, a machine room, kitchenette stuff? Build them in now or allow for easy addition later. Good ratios for sound reproduction should work with music creation. Integrating some corner bass trapping should work for both, too.

Others are right that true isolation is a royal and expensive PITA. But it doesn't mean you don't look and see what you can do to build it a bit better than it would have been from the start. Easiest move you could do for a little bit of help: have other rooms between the theater and the outside walls on all sides, kind of a freebie room within a room.

[Cantplay]

High freq sound escapes from air leaks.

If you do double sheetrock, halflap the 2nd layer so seams don't align.

From the other side get someone to foam spray, that seals up your air leaks.

Give some thought to how live or dead you want to room to sound, and some way to tweak that after its built. I've seen rooms built with 3 dead walls, and one live one.

Install enough dedicated run outlets. at each location one outlet off each leg. This can cure ground loop hum sometimes.

Run your cat 5 in the wall and enough outlets. Don't rely on wifi.

John

[Firestorm]

Soundproof usually means airtight so you have the problem of how you're going to breathe. Airflow into and out of the room has to be treated as carefully as the rest of the construction. Air coming in pretty much has to "fall" in so you don't hear the sound of it blowing; air out can be pulled by a fan located at the far end of the duct. The ducts themselves need to be wrapped in something to soundproof them and they should have baffles inside to trap as much sound as possible. It's almost a bigger challenge than the rest of the room.

[Scumback Speakers]

When I wanted answers to all of my soundproofing (or minimizing/capturing) needs for my 3 car garage, I went to this site.

http://www.johnlsayers.com/phpBB2/index.php

I followed the advice given there and you can crank a 100w Marshall through two 4x12's and it sounds like someone switched on a TV outside.

They also have plans, materials, costs, diagrams and other great stuff to aid you in designing a studio.